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Share Puchong Properties Price (2019 April) at github

~ zkchong ~ Leave a comment

Real estate is one of the favorite investments for working folks in Malaysia. As part of the data savvy company, the data engineering team have harvested the prices of Puchong properties from one of the famous properties website and the extracted data (Puchong area only*) are shared at github  https://github.com/zkchong/puchong-properties-2019-april .

Like you guys, we have a lot of questions in our mind:

    1. Do all the properties share about the same price per square foot (psf) if they are located at about the same area?
    2. Will the psf be slightly higher if they are located near to the main road?
    3. Which properties should I invest ? ^o^

Feel free to clone the data fromgithub.

May all the mighty data scientists plot their best insight.

We plot the bar chart for Puchong Housing Price (Apr, 2019) at here.
Original linkedin post @ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6520490026600624128

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Circuit Theory 2014 May – Teaching Summaries

~ zkchong ~ 1 Comment

  I start writing summaries for my daily teaching in UTAR and posted them in our dedicated Facebook group.

  I not really sure if the students will appreciate the summaries. But I do think* that they can use the summaries to recap what have been delivered in that the class while they are asleep. To me, these summaries can re-explain and re-clarify some concepts, which I have badly explained in class.

Continue reading “Circuit Theory 2014 May – Teaching Summaries” →

At the End of the Class

~ zkchong ~ Leave a comment

I never think I am good or have passion in teaching. But I do try to join the students in the journey in learning (though not every time success), have them enjoy the learning, try to convey something important other than the questions that may come out in the exam.

In the end of the class, I hope they have learned something good in life. I am sure they have bright future.

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UEET2533 Information Theory and Coding (2014 January)

Living in Cloud with Samsung Chromebook

~ zkchong ~ Leave a comment

2014-01-17 12.02.11I always like to work on my stuff wherever I am. Perhaps this is due to my role as a PhD student and also an academic staff, or I am just addicted to Internet. I have an IPad for about two years. But most of the time I just can’t do things with IPad — I need a real keyboard with bigger screen.

My friends always take me as a weirdy when I take out my Samsung Chromebook in office or coffee shop. They always curious how I going to survive with this “Internet-oriented machine”. Generally, the Chromebook is not that popular in Malaysia as compared to IOS or Android tablet. Still, I find the Chrome OS (operating system to run the Chromebook) interesting and cool and bought it second hand in a good deal.

This is my experience with Samsung Chromebook after using it for about a month.

Hardware

The Samsung Chromebook is light and has about 6 hours battery life. Additionally, the Samsung Chromebook has an impressing sleep function (standby mode) — it takes about 1 second to wake up from or go into the sleep mode. Imagine that you just need to open the lid to start you work and close the lid when you decide to go. No waiting needed.

Additionally, Samsung Chromebook has a comfortable keyboard and nice touch pad. I can scroll the browser with two fingers and switching the tabs with three fingers, etc..

Simulation Software

As a PhD student, I need to work on the computer software such as Python and Sage. Basically, I can run Python in Cloud9 (only one private project per free account) and Sage on its own web app. Nonetheless, I still prefer work my coding in the real machine instead of cloud because of the data safety issue — I feel insecure to leave my research work in cloud.

PDF Annotation 

Reading research papers is a must-do activity for a PhD student. Generally, the research papers are in the PDF form. We can read the PDF with Chrome browser or Google drive viewer. However, there isn’t much choice if we want to have annotate the PDF. Both PDFZen and Crocodoc provide free PDF annotation services. Basically, PDFZen is able to retrieve the PDF from Google Drive and store it back afterwards, but it is unstable after all. Comparatively, Crocodoc does not link with Google Drive — the user needs to upload the PDF manually to the website manually and download it back to Google Drive after the annotation. I prefer Crocodoc though it is not that convenient.

Preparing Research Paper

Most PhD students prepare their research paper with Latex rather than MS Word. I prefer the ShareLatex but WriteLatex seems to have a better interface. In fact, I still prefer to prepare the research paper with Lyx, a beautiful Latex word processor but it only runs in Windows and Linux.

Office Suite

My university uses MS Word a lot in official documents. I found Zoho Doc (link-able with Google Drive) handles the MS Word much better than Google Doc and Quick Office. Most of my lecture slides are prepared with LibreOffice or MS Office. Some of my meeting records and plans are prepared in Google Doc.

Brainstorming and Note Taking

I like Evernote. It is free and upgradable for better features and capacity. I use it a lot for brainstorming ideas.

Research Meeting with Hangout

Hangout is a chatting app, something like Skype. And, it is fun. You can video call your friend with some entertaining effect in the video.

Verdict

Perhaps Samsung Chromebook is just an Internet browser machine. Like Pirillo said, “I bought it for what it is, and not for what it is not“. There are still room of improvement for the apps and I am concerning on the safety of the data stored in cloud. Other than these, Chromebook is a good cool machine and I enjoy using it.

Solving Simultaneous Equations with Python

~ zkchong

I own a very old fashion scientific calculator and it can’t solve any simultaneous equations like those new calculators (not even 2×2!). The situation goes worst when I try to do my Circuit Theory tutorial, in which I need to solve many simultaneous equations. Can’t I just concentrate on forming the equations and let someone to solve them for me?

Well! Let the Python do it!

All you have to do is forming the proper equations. Then, fire up the following script. Key in the proper coefficients of each equation when Python asks.

Please feel free to copy and use it anywhere you like.

Screenshot

#!/bin/python
import numpy as np

print 'How many variables ?'
print '>> ',
total_variable = int(raw_input())

# User key in all the variable numbers

equation_list = []

for i in range(total_variable):
    print
    print 'Please enter the coefficients of the #%d equation.' % (i+1)
    print 'For example: (1)*x0 + (2)*x1 = (3) ---> "1 2 3"'
    print '>> ',
    user_input = raw_input()
    user_token_str = user_input.split()
    assert (len(user_token_str)== (total_variable +1))
    user_token = [float(u) for u in user_token_str]
    equation_list.append(user_token)
print

equation_arr = np.array(equation_list)

#
# A * X = Y
# Given A and Y, we need to find X.
#

Y_arr = equation_arr[:, -1:]
A_arr = equation_arr[:, :-1]

print 'Y_arr:' , Y_arr
print 'A_arr:' , A_arr

X_arr = np.linalg.solve(A_arr, Y_arr)

print 'Answer:'
for i, x in enumerate (X_arr):
    print 'x%d value: %f' % (i, x)